I recently visited San Diego for a Wiki[m|p]edia conference. I was able to attend this very special event, thanks to WIkimedia Sverige (Sweden). During my visit I were able to put face together with old names I’ve previously collaborated with over the net.

It is empowering to feel that you are not alone in this movement of our, but instead that we are a collective with the same principles and goals. It is easy to forget, when we are sitting in our bedrooms with our laptops in bed, that it isn’t just you doing it, but a whole bunch of other nerds people doing the exact same thing, but on another side of the planet.

We might not share the same languge, and we might not share the same political or social beleives, but we do believe in a movement to provide the sum of all human knowledge, to everyone, no matter the former stated differences we, or they, might have.

Not all project, movement, or groups of people are as interconnected and caring towards each other as we are. I was able to travel roughly 14 hours away from home, to meet mostly strangers at a conference I’d never attended before – and yet I was able to connect and be included amongst these people.

I just wanted to say that I love every single one of you who are working to make others lifes better or easier. Either by providing more information by writing or translating, or if you help develop new software which will help new users feel included, or make a tool more accessible towards blind people. As I’ve said, no matter what you do, you should always now: We are in this together! We are united towards the same goal, and only together can we reach it. #WikiLove

In January I uploaded a silent film video which I found on Wikimedia Commons to YouTube. This said film has fallen under the public domain, due to age. Less than one week later I recived a DMCA takedown notice from Milestone FIlms, via YouTube.

This was quite shocking for me, since the video is clearly old and should be in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1923.

I had to go looking on multiple different help guides and forums to understand how I could refute the takedown notice. It took about one week, if not more, to have the file restored.

In January I uploaded a silent film video which I found on Wikimedia Commons to YouTube. This said film has fallen under the public domain, due to age. Less than one week later I received a DMCA takedown notice from Milestone FIlms, via YouTube.

In August 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation recived a DMCA takedown notice of some content on the “Sport in Australia“-article on the English Wikipedia. That’s because the sending party claimed that they own the copyrights for the following information table, which is included below. Continue reading DMCA’s – Copyrights best friend

As the internet keeps growing at an exponential rate, it is also imploding in on itself at an even faster one. Companies go out of business, their servers closed and with them websites, important history and part of the internet, dies.

We have all seen them. The horrible walls. The end of the internet. A hole. A page which says “404“.

That beautiful image of your family your took on your trip to Gran Canaria last year and uploaded to that file sharing website, can be gone in an instance. Poof.

How can we prevent such important parts of our life’s and history from disappearing in front of our eyes? By archiving these websites and creating mirror-websites. Websites such as The Wayback Machine run by the non-profit organization the Internet Archive is just one example how we can make copies of the internet. However, we need to do this at a much higher rate.

Websites close down at such a high rate, and are archived at such an infrequent rate that it is impossible to archive all websites as it is today, without missing a whole bunch which just…disappeared.

A few months agoI stared transferring images of species form Flickr to Wikimedia Commons which had an acceptable license. However rewarding this might be for the grand scheme of free knowledge and information, it feels terrible to see images which has more restrictive licenses.

I took it upon myself to contact a few of these Flickr-photographers and asked them nicely if they could agree to change their licenses to a more open and free license (of course I used the ‘can be used in Wikipedia‘-aspect), and one of them actually responded to me and agreed to change their licenses on all their ~11 000 images of species.

This only goes to show that outreach is the best way to help the free knowledge movement. People want to help out and have their material shared and used, all it takes it a push in the right direction.

It is exactly what it sounds like, a freedom. A freedom to be allowed to take photographs in public, such as panorama photos of ones surrounding.

If you want to snap a photo of a building or a nice statue permanently placed in public, you are allowed to do so, and share it however you want. Nobody, such as the architect or artist of said statue, can sue you for intellectual property infringement, nor can they claim copyright of the images which you have taken. Those are yours alone, free to do what you want with.

Some countries, such as the UK and Sweden allow such freedoms, while a few such as Itally disallows it, limiting ones freedoms. Which side of history do you want to be on? The one which forbids photography, or allow it?

For a long time now photography has been one of the biggest art form out there. Everybody photographs. For private use, Instagram, Facebook, or other usage. Now imagine if there were a law forbidding you from photographing outside of your home. Forbidding you to photograph buildings and forbidding you to shares such images. That is the reality in some countries, such as in Italy today.

One politician in the European Parliament wanted to help people in countries such Italy in the EU, however this got some nasty backlash. Instead of making photography in the European Union less restrictive, now a motion to make it even harsher in the entire European Union has been filed.

This will forbid you and I to photograph buildings and structures such as the London Eye in London and The Little Mermaid in Denmark.

Please help out and tell the politicians in your country to do something to stop this, and remember to sign the petition! Links are below.